Well, semi-seriously. In the Russian-language wikipedia it is forbidden to talk of Ukraine as an independent country. I don’t consider that terribly neutral. (They did have a vote about this, and because the Russian-language Wikipedia has more users from the Russia than from other countries, the Russian “opinion” about this won the vote. But it’s absolutely not neutral anyway and with such a rule in place, it’s ridiculous to claim that Wikipedia is really neutral. It is neutral-ish, though, yes.)
I should’ve clarified “the English Wikipedia”, since I can’t speak for all the languages (although all the other ones I’ve regularly visited have been fine). The English Wikipedia sets its own policies and guidelines, and the other languages are free to choose their policies and guidelines (within the bounds of the WMF). Ours on neutrality is as follows:
I hadn’t known that eqch language version has such a high level of autonomy.
Though, when reading that text, it also looks like there are Wikipedia-wide standards that the ruling on Russian-language Wikipedia is clearly breaking. (I noticed this when I was trying to edit an article about an electric locomotive built in Ukraine and used nowhere else than Ukraine. When I corrected phrasing “built on Ukraine” to “built in Ukraine”, a error message popped up telling that " on Ukraine" has been decided as the only allowed form. And the grammatical rule is that of independent countries you always say “in”. After the Orange Revolution in 2008 the Russia made an exception to this rule, because it wanted to prepare Russians for the invasion that then took place six years later, in 2014. But that exception was never accepted by Ukrainians, who continued using system that had been official since 1991. And it’s quite crazy than in an article about Ukraine, written mainly for Ukrainians, in a language used by 40% of Ukrainians as their everyday language, you are forced to use grammatical forms that can only be used about a region but never about an independent county!)
a error message popped up telling that " on Ukraine" has been decided as the only allowed form.
That’s… interesting and concerning. I unfortunately lack the knowledge to find how that rule was implemented or how it slots into the Russian Wikipedia’s policies. Keep in mind in that NPOV article that “Wikipedia” is shorthand for “the English Wikipedia” following the first sentence, so huge portions of that only inherently apply to English (even if there’s probably a lot of overlap with others). There really are major languages I basically never visit, and Russian is one of them – only very occasionally for cross-linking a Russian topic we lack an article about. I’m totally inept about what goes on there.
Well, semi-seriously. In the Russian-language wikipedia it is forbidden to talk of Ukraine as an independent country. I don’t consider that terribly neutral. (They did have a vote about this, and because the Russian-language Wikipedia has more users from the Russia than from other countries, the Russian “opinion” about this won the vote. But it’s absolutely not neutral anyway and with such a rule in place, it’s ridiculous to claim that Wikipedia is really neutral. It is neutral-ish, though, yes.)
I should’ve clarified “the English Wikipedia”, since I can’t speak for all the languages (although all the other ones I’ve regularly visited have been fine). The English Wikipedia sets its own policies and guidelines, and the other languages are free to choose their policies and guidelines (within the bounds of the WMF). Ours on neutrality is as follows:
Oh, that’s interesting!
I hadn’t known that eqch language version has such a high level of autonomy.
Though, when reading that text, it also looks like there are Wikipedia-wide standards that the ruling on Russian-language Wikipedia is clearly breaking. (I noticed this when I was trying to edit an article about an electric locomotive built in Ukraine and used nowhere else than Ukraine. When I corrected phrasing “built on Ukraine” to “built in Ukraine”, a error message popped up telling that " on Ukraine" has been decided as the only allowed form. And the grammatical rule is that of independent countries you always say “in”. After the Orange Revolution in 2008 the Russia made an exception to this rule, because it wanted to prepare Russians for the invasion that then took place six years later, in 2014. But that exception was never accepted by Ukrainians, who continued using system that had been official since 1991. And it’s quite crazy than in an article about Ukraine, written mainly for Ukrainians, in a language used by 40% of Ukrainians as their everyday language, you are forced to use grammatical forms that can only be used about a region but never about an independent county!)
That’s… interesting and concerning. I unfortunately lack the knowledge to find how that rule was implemented or how it slots into the Russian Wikipedia’s policies. Keep in mind in that NPOV article that “Wikipedia” is shorthand for “the English Wikipedia” following the first sentence, so huge portions of that only inherently apply to English (even if there’s probably a lot of overlap with others). There really are major languages I basically never visit, and Russian is one of them – only very occasionally for cross-linking a Russian topic we lack an article about. I’m totally inept about what goes on there.